Odysseus finds a home
According to a report from CNN, the location of Ithaca, the birthplace of Homer’s Odysseus, may have been found. New tests seem to confirm the search team’s belief that it is on Paliki, a peninsula of the island of Kefalonia. CNN fails to mention that the three team members – Robert Bittlestone; James Diggle, a Cambridge classics professor; and John Underhill, a geology professor at the University of Edinburgh – published Odysseus Unbound in 2005, explaining their claim.
Scholars have had difficulty pinpointing the location of Ithaca due to discrepancies in descriptions of the island found in the epic poem. Odysseus Unbound argues that the location is correct but the land had shifted over time, so that what was once an island is now attached to the peninsula. While scholars are uncertain if Odysseus or his home are real, previous discoveries of the ruins of Troy and, now, this team’s claim, are adding a touch of reality to the famous epic.
